For As Good As It Gets, UConn Women Still Learning

UConn defeated Memphis 87-24 in an AAC women's basketball game Saturday at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs. It was Senior Day, so seniors Kiah Stokes and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis were honored in a pregame ceremony.

TAMPA, Fla. – There was a span during Saturday's first half against Memphis that lasted for 10 minutes, 37 seconds in which UConn scored 31 straight points. It transformed the game from a competition (10-4) to a caricature (41-4) in as little time it took for fans to get popcorn from the concession stand.

These events are called runs. But this was just not a run. This was a marathon spanning each borough of UConn's vast talent base. And it was spectacular to see.

UConn's longest string of unanswered points this season paved its path to a remarkably easy 87-24 win over the Tigers that accentuated Senior Day at Gampel Pavilion, clinched the regular-season championship for the Huskies and sent a sellout crowd home happy.

It also pushed UConn's margin of victory during its first 17 conference games to 50.2 points, even more remarkable when you consider those opponents have averaged only 40.5 points in the process.

But it did not spare UConn's players from what followed as they prepared to end the regular season at South Florida Monday. The Bulls (24-5, 15-2) will be the second seed in this weekend's American Athletic Conference Tournament at Mohegan Sun Arena and are NCAA bound, perhaps the only other AAC team headed to the field of 64.

As good as things may have looked on Saturday, they can always look better, even though UConn leads the AAC in 13 of 14 major statistical categories. And the Huskies don't have much time to iron out the kinks coaches tend to focus on before the NCAA Tournament begins.

"We're pretty good," Kiah Stokes said. "But we still have a lot of things to do. There were points in the game where we were stagnant or turned the ball over too many times in a row. Those are the things we can pick up and clean up."

To that end, Geno Auriemma said the coaches planned to show the team a short video of the Memphis game on Sunday morning that would illustrate their point about tightening things up.

The UConn women's basketball team honored seniors Kiah Stokes and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis before their final regular season home game at Gampel Pavilion.

The UConn women's basketball team honored seniors Kiah Stokes and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis before their final regular season home game at Gampel Pavilion.

"You can get to see who you are," Auriemma said. "As the game is going on you [the coaches] can tell in your mind's eye that the kid [who made the mistake] is not going to be happy with that when they see it."

But just like statistics can be interpreted any which way, videos can be produced with enough pliability to make the Huskies think they lost the game by 63.

"We'll watch the film and coach will find those mistakes," Stokes said. "It's not going to be good until it's perfect. And you know how hard that can be."

And when it comes to this, Auriemma's as creative as Francis Ford Coppola.

"When we watch film, it's usually no more than seven minutes long," Auriemma said. "And in that time, you may not see any snippet [of action] for longer than five or 10 seconds. Boom, boom, boom, boom. There's a whole bunch of them [highlights].

"And we can make every single film look exactly what we want it to look like. If we lost by 20, we can make it look like we won by 20. If we won by 35, we can make it look like it was a one-point game. We can do whatever we want with the film, depending on what exactly it is we want to point out to them."

And when UConn's video crew compiles these instructional videos, they do so with strict instructions from the coaching staff regarding what the day's lecture is going to focus on.

"When you show a team specific plays, the point is they really don't indicate anything specifically in the big scheme of things, if you win, especially by as much as we did," Auriemma said of Saturday's game. "What does one play have to do with anything? Nothing.

"But for any one kid, that play, if it is something that's been recurring, indicates we have a problem. If this is something we've noticed is happening over and over and over again, well, either we are bad coaches or you are a bad student. One of those two things must be the case. If it's just a onetime thing we'll gloss over it."

The Huskies did turn the ball over 17 times, the most since they had 20 at East Carolina on Dec. 31. Freshman guard Kia Nurse, who Auriemma says has hit a small wall of late, had four of them in just 22 minutes. Morgan Tuck, one of the team's most reliable stars, also had an off-day, shooting 1-for-4 with two rebounds in just 10 minutes.

But all their other measurable seemed on point.

"You are doing it more for individual development than team purposes," Auriemma said. "I am not saying there aren't times when you watch film that all you want to do is bitch at the team, for whatever reason. But most of the time, at this point of the season, you are just looking to make an individual nod their head and say, 'Yeah, I know, I know, I got it.' "